Beschreibung:

Zhang Xiaogang Amnesia and Memory (One week) 2004 Each panel: 110.5 x 130.2 cm. (43 1/2 x 51 1/4 in). From left to right: Signed and dated ‘Zhang Xiaogang 2004/11' lower right; Signed and dated ‘Zhang Xiaogang 2003/4' lower right; Signed and dated ‘Zhang Xiaogang 2004/11' lower right; Signed and dated ‘Zhang Xiaogang 2003/4' lower right. Signed and dated ‘Zhang Xiaogang 2004/11' lower right; Signed and dated ‘Zhang Xiaogang 2004/11' lower right. Signed and dated ‘Zhang Xiaogang 2004/11' lower right.
Provenance Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai Exhibited Shanghai, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Three worlds, 10 December, 2004 – 9 January, 2005 Catalogue Essay Not only was it difficult for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him that the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three fifteen (see from the front). His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him every time he saw them. - Jorge Luis Borges ‘Funes the Memorious' (1942) Zhang Xiaogang is internationally celebrated for his artistic commentary on the individual and collective character of contemporary Chinese memory. Born in 1958 in the province of Sichuan, he was an early progenitor of the ‘Sichuan schoo' of painters that includes Ye Yongqing and Zhou Chunya. As a youth he was heavily influenced by Impressionist painters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin. His Bloodlines and Amnesia and Memory series invoke traditional forms of twentieth-century Chinese studio portraiture, undercut with subtly harrowing stains and fissuring bloodlines that symbolize the random, underlying pressures of reality. Amnesia and Memory (One Week) is a monumental work that comprises seven panels, one correlating to each day of the week. It is the first and only work of Zhang's to date that unites every important symbol of his art: the lightbulb, the haunting face with lustrous eyes, a hand inscribing an unseen text, the infant, the unplugged television set, a lone loudspeaker in a landscape, the disembodied hand grasping an unplugged lightbulb. Although the majority of Zhang's oeuvre belongs to the ‘Cynical Realist' school, this masterpiece distinctly shares the Symbolist qualities of the artist's work from the early 1990s. Like Zhang's early work, the elements of Amnesia and Memory (One Week) extend beyond human portraiture to incorporate a medley of quotidian objects that summon up a surreal, half-remembered life. In comparison to the early works, the present lot is significantly more serene, less abrasive in both composition and tone, as if reflective of a turbulent collective consciousness that has lately softened through forgiveness or nostalgia. The most popular frame of reference for Zhang's portraits is the family studio portrait, exceedingly popular in China during the 1960s and 1970s, upon which the acclaimed Bloodlines series draws. In the artist's more recent In/Out series, his focus moves to interior and exterior landscapes, real or imagined, and devoid of human presence. Amnesia and Memory (One Week) presents complete facets of the critical transition between Bloodlines and the In/Out works, incorporating both portrait and landscape in a Symbolist fashion that places the viewer in a dreamlike sequence. Looking upon these seven panels, our psychological constructs of time and space are left without anchor, highlighting the inevitable discontinuity that has become an accepted part of postmodernism narrative. For many contemporary Chinese artists, amnesia is memory. Time is an essential element of traditional Chinese painting, particularly scroll and landscape paintings that require the viewer to "read" the work from beginning to end. Continuity was rendered in entire narrative frames that chronicled affairs of state, skirmishes and full-fledged wars, and various intrigues in the form of sociopolitical liaisons and love affairs. Even during the Cultural Revolution, the integrity of neither time nor narrative was questioned by the artistic forms of studio family portraits and propaganda art. In the past two decades, the velocity of economic and technological change in China has given rise to entirely different conceptions of time and space. Speed and dynamic space is most easily reflected in the mediums of photography and video. The more difficult task of painting, like Zhang's, combines nostalgic imagery with disjunctive elements that underscore the power